Perhaps this is a very silly question, but I’m not all that computer savvy. I recently discovered the “Temporary Internet Files” folder on my computer (I use IE and Windows ME if that matters). What are they? What do they do? Do they delete themselves after a certain amount of time (being “temporary” and all) or do I have to clean out the folder myself?
They are just local copies of webpages your computer keeps. When you visit a website for the first time, your computer stores the HTML, graphics and other files associated with it, so that when you visit that site again it only has to load up the local copies, which makes the site load faster. This process is called caching.
You see all this stuff on this page? It’s in your temporary internet files folder.
You have to get rid of them yourself by doing this:
Tools>Internet tools>Delete Files
You could also get a cache cleaner (like Window Washer, for example) which can be set to delete those files as well as cookies and browsing history. Some can be set to “bleach” those files making it difficult (but not impossible) to retrieve.
Are there any benefits to that? Will that free up memory for example?
Thanks for the answers so far.
Memory? No.
Disk space? Yes.
I clean my cache out daily (I use CleanMOCache for Firefox & Opera, but it can clean Windows, too).
Not really. There are a few potential benefits, though. Occasionally clearing your cache can solve problems with webpages not loading correctly or other problems with site access. And, for the paranoid, clearing out one’s temp files is one way to hide one’s tracks on the internet. Also, if your hard drive space is at a premium, clearing your cache can recover valuable drive space–but it will all be eaten up again eventually, unless you change your cache settings to specify a smaller allotted drive space.
It won’t do that much for space with today’s large hard drives. The big issue for most people is privacy and preventing other people to easily check where you surfed.
There is no performance benefit to this, unless you got a little bitty hard drive (or a big one that’s almost completely full). Now, if paranoia is your bag, then yeah, that’s the way to go.
I’m running dual 120Gb drives, but clearing out the cache is habit acquired from when I had a much smaller drive.
It did have a performance benefit in the early days of the web: if you were trying to view a page at a 9600 baud modem, it was quicker to used the cached copy than to download it again. With broadband, that’s no longer an issue.
Though for people like me using old computers ( 5 Gb on my disk), temporary internet files use enough disk space (last time I cleaned them, 30 Mb) to make a significant difference.
Back in 1995 or so, I had a Pentium I machine with a 2.3Gb drive. I didn’t know anything about temporary internet files until I read a story in Time magazine. When I checked my files, there were thousands upon thousands of files of various sizes. I started keeping the drive clean ever since.
Nifty! Thanks.
You can set a limit on the size of your cache. In IE, for example, go to Tools > Internet Options > General tab. Then click the Settings button under “Temporary Internet Files”.
Does anybody know how to do this in Firefox?
Or this in Firefox? 
Clearing this seems to help speed up document searches. I just went to my temp files and selected view and just over 20 thousand files came up. Then I hit delete and it took about three and a half minutes to perform that task. Now when I do local document searches, I notice the search engine no longer sits at the C\documents and settings… emporary internet files directory for several minutes trying to comb through all the junk.
I notice that even when I specify what kind of document I’m searcing for (vsd or ppt) it still wants to sift through the temp files. That seems kind of silly- I wonder why the search doesn’t exclude the temp files by default?
To limit the cache in firefox, go to tools -> options then click on privacy (why is it under privacy? I dunno…). You have the option to clear the cache (the equivalent of IE’s delete temporary files), and also the option to set how much space it uses.
I imagine it’s because, as previously noted, clearing the cache is primarily a privacy issue rather than a performance one, nowadays.
Many thanks! 